Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa and one of the oldest in the world. Herodotus, the Greek historian of the 5th century BC describes ancient Ethiopia in his writings. The Old Testament of the Bible records the Queen of Sheba[?]'s visit to Jerusalem. According to legend, Menelik I[?], the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, founded the Ethiopian Empire. Missionaries from Egypt and Syria introduced Christianity in the 4th century AD. Following the rise of Islam in the 7th century, Ethiopia was gradually cut off from European Christendom. The Portuguese established contact with Ethiopia in 1493, primarily to strengthen their hegemony over the Indian Ocean and to convert Ethiopia to Roman Catholicism. There followed a century of conflict between pro- and anti-Catholic factions, resulting in the expulsion of all foreign missionaries in the 1630s. This period of bitter religious conflict contributed to hostility toward foreign Christians and Europeans, which persisted into the 20th century and was a factor in Ethiopia's isolation until the mid-19th century.

In 1930, after the empress died, the regent, adopting the throne name Haile Selassie, was crowned emperor. His reign was interrupted in 1936 when Italian Fascist forces invaded and occupied Ethiopia (they took the capital Addis Abba[?] on May 5 and formally annexed Ethiopia on May 9). The emperor was forced into exile in England despite his plea to the League of Nations for intervention. Five years later, the Italians were defeated by British and Ethiopian forces, and the emperor returned to the throne.
After a period of civil unrest which began in February 1974, the aging Haile Selassie I was deposed on September 12, 1974, and a provisional administrative council of soldiers, known as the Derg ("committee") seized power from the emperor and installed a government which was socialist in name and military in style. The Derg summarily executed 59 members of the royal family and ministers and generals of the emperor's government; Emperor Haile Selassie was strangled in the basement of his palace on August 22, 1975.

Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam assumed power as head of state and Derg chairman, after having his two predecessors killed. Mengistu's years in office were marked by a totalitarian-style government and the country's massive militarization, financed by the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and assisted by Cuba. From 1977 through early 1978 thousands of suspected enemies of the Derg were tortured and/or killed in a purge called the "red terror." Communism was officially adopted during the late 1970s and early 1980s with the promulgation of a Soviet-style constitution, Politburo, and the creation of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia (WPE).

In December 1976, an Ethiopian delegation in Moscow signed a military assistance agreement with the Soviet Union. The following April, Ethiopia abrogated its military assistance agreement with the United States and expelled the American military missions. In July 1977, sensing the disarray in Ethiopia, Somalia attacked across the Ogaden Desert in pursuit of its irredentist claims to the ethnic Somali areas of Ethiopia. Ethiopian forces were driven back far inside their own frontiers but, with the assistance of a massive Soviet airlift of arms and Cuban combat forces, they stemmed the attack. The major Somali regular units were forced out of the Ogaden in March 1978. Twenty years later, the Somali region of Ethiopia remains under-developed and insecure.

The Derg's collapse was hastened by droughts and famine, as well as by insurrections, particularly in the northern regions of Tigray and Eritrea. In 1989, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) merged with other ethnically based opposition movements to form the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). In May 1991, EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa. Mengistu fled the country and was granted asylum in Zimbabwe, where he still resides.

In July 1991, the EPRDF, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and others established the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) which was comprised of an 87-member Council of Representatives and guided by a national charter that functioned as a transitional constitution. In June 1992 the OLF withdrew from the government; in March 1993, members of the Southern Ethiopia Peoples' Democratic Coalition left the government.

Text from 1911 encyclopedia:

HISTORY

(12) Abyssiania, or at least the northern portion of it, was
included in the tract of country known to the ancients as
Ethiopia, the northern limits of which reached at one time to
about Syene.

The connexion between Egypt and Ethiopia was in
early times very intimate, and occasionally the two countries
were under the same ruler, so that the arts and civilization
of the one naturally found their way into the other.

In early
times, too, the Hebrews had commercial intercourse with the
Ethiopians; and according to Ethiopian tradition the
queen of Sheba[?] who visited Solomon was a monarch of their country,
and from their son Menelek[?] the kings of Ethiopia claim
descent. During the Captivity many of the Jews settled here
and brought with them a knowledge of the Jewish religion.

Under the Ptolemies, the arts as well as the enterprise of the
Greeks entered Ethiopia, and led to the establishment of Greek
colonies. A Greek inscription at Adulis, no longer extant,
but copied by Cosmas of Alexandria[?], and preserved in his
Topographia Christiana, records that Ptolemy Euergetes[?], the
third of the Greek dynasty in Egypt, invaded the countries
on both sides of the Red Sea, and having reduced most of the
provinces of Tigre to subjection, returned to the port of
Adulis, and there offered sacrifices to Jupiter, Mars and
Neptune. Another inscription, not so ancient, found at Axum,
states that Aizanas[?], king of the Axumites, the Homerites,
etc., conquered the nation of the Bogos, and returned thanks
to his father, the god Mars, for his victory.

Out of these
Greek colonies appears to have arisen the kingdom of Auxume[?]
which flourished from the 1st to the 7th century A.D.
and was at one time nearly coextensive with Ethiopia
proper. The capital Auxume and the seaport Adulis were then
the chief centres of the trade with the interior of Africa
in gold dust, ivory, leather, aromatics, etc. At Axum, the
site of the ancient capital, many vestiges of its former
greatness still exist; and the ruins of Adulis, which was
once a seaport on the bay of Annesley, are now about 4 miles
from the shore.

Introduction of Christianity.

(13) Christianity was introduced into the country by Frumentius[?],
who was consecrated first bishop of Ethiopia by
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria about A.D. 330. From the scanty
evidence available it would appear that the new religion
at first made little progress, and the Axumite kings seem
to have been among the latest converts. Towards the close
of the 5th century a great company of monks are believed to
have established themselves in the country. Since that time
monachism has been a power among the people and not without
its influence on the course of events.

In the early part of
the 6th century the king of the Homerites, on the opposite
coast of the Red Sea, having persecuted the Christians, the
emperor Justinian I requested the king of Auxume, Caleh or
El-Esbaha, to avenge their cause. He accordingly collected
an army, crossed over into Arabia, and conquered Yemen (c.
525), which remained subject to Ethiopia for about fifty
years. This was the most flourishing period in the annals
of the country. The Ethiopians possessed the richest part of
Arabia, carried on a large trade, which extended as far as
India and Ceylon, and were in constant communication with
the Greek empire.

Their expulsion from Arabia, followed
by the conquest of Egypt by the Muslims in the middle
of the 7th century, changed this state of affairs, and the
continued advances of the followers of the Prophet at length
cut them off from almost every means of communication with
the civilized world; so that, as Gibbon says, "encompassed
by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept for
near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they
were forgotten."

About A.D. 1000, a Jewish princess,
Judith, conceived the design of murdering all the members
of the royal family, and of establishing herself in their
stead. During the execution of this project, the infant king
was carded off by some faithful adherents, and conveyed to
Shoa, where his authority was acknowledged, while Judith
reigned for forty years over the rest of the kingdom, and
transmitted the crown to her descendants. In 1268 the kingdom
was restored to the royal house in the person of Yekunu Amlak[?].

Portuguese Influence.

(14) Towards the close of the 15th century the Portuguese
missions into Ethiopia began. A belief had long prevailed
in Europe of the existence of a Christian kingdom in the far
east, whose monarch was known as Prester John, and various
expeditions had been sent in quest of it. Among others who
had engaged in this search was Pedro de Covilham[?], who arrived
in Ethiopia in 1490, and, believing that he had at length
reached the far-famed kingdom, presented to the negus, or
emperor of the country, a letter from his master the king of
Portugal, addressed to Prester John.

Covilham remained in the
country, but in 1507 an Armenian named Matthew was sent by the
negus to the king of Portugal to request his aid against the
Muslims. In 1520 a Portuguese fleet, with Matthew on
board, entered the Red Sea in compliance with this request,
and an embassy from the fleet visited the negus, Lebna Dengel
Dawit (David) II., and remained in Ethiopia for about six
years. One of this embassy was Father Francisco Alvarez,
from whom we have the earliest and not the least interesting
account of the country.

Between 1528 and 1540 armies of
Muslims, under the renowned general Mahommed Gran (or
Granye, probably a Somali or a Galla), entered Ethiopia
from the low country to the south-east, and overran the
kingdom, obliging the emperor to take refuge in the mountain
fastnesses. In this extremity recourse was again had to the
Portuguese. John Bermudez, a subordinate member of the
mission of 1520, who had remained in the country after the
departure of the embassy, was, according to his own statement
(which is untrustworthy), ordained successor to the abuna
(archbishop), and sent to Lisbon. Bermudez certainly came to
Europe, but with what credentials is not known.

Be that as
it may, a Portuguese fleet, under the command of Stephen da
Gama, was sent from India and arrived at Massawa in February
1541. Here he received an ambassador from the negus beseeching
him to send help against the Moslems, and in the July following
a force of 450 musqueteers, under the command of Christopher
da Gama, younger brother of the admiral, marched into the
interior, and being joined by native troops were at first
successful against the enemy; but they were subsequently
defeated, and their commander taken prisoner and put to death
(August 1542). On the 21st of February 1543, however, Mahommed
Granye was shot in an engagement and his forces totally
routed. After this, quarrels arose between the negus and
Bermudez, who had returned to Ethiopia with Christopher
da Gama and who now wished the emperor publicly to profess
himself a convert to Rome. This the negus refused to do,
and at length Bermudez was obliged to make his way out of the
country.

The Jesuits who had accompanied or followed the da
Gama expedition into Ethiopia, and fixed their headquarters
at Fremona (near Adowa), were oppressed and neglected, but
not actually expelled. In the beginning of the 17th century
Father Pedro Paez arrived at Fremona, a man of great tact and
judgment, who soon rose into high favour at court, and gained
over the emperor to his faith. He directed the erection of
churches, palaces and bridges in different parts of the
country, and carried out many useful works. His successor
Mendez was a man of much less conciliatory manners, and
the feelings of the people became strongly excited against
the intruders, till at length, on the death of the negus
Sysenius, Socinius or Seged I., and the accession of his son
Fasilidas in 1633, they were all sent out of the country, after
having had a footing there for nearly a century and a half.

Visits of Poncet and Bruce.

The French physician C. J. Poncet, who went there in 1698,
via Sennar and the Blue Nile, was the only European
that afterwards visited the country before Bruce in
1769. James Bruce's main object was to discover the sources
of the Nile, which he was convinced lay in Ethiopia.
Accordingly, leaving Massawa in September 1769, he travelled
via Axum to Gondar, where he was well received by King
Tekla Haimanot II. He accompanied the king on a warlike
expedition round Lake Tsana, moving S. round the eastern
shore, crossing the genuine Blue Nile (Abai) close to its
point of issue from the lake and returning via the western
shore. On a second expedition of his own he proved to his
own satisfaction that the river originated some 4o miles
S.W. of the lake at a place called Geesh (4th of November
1770). He showed that this river flowed into the lake, and
left it by its now well-known outlet. Bruce subsequently
returned to Egypt (end of 1772) via Gondar, the upper Atbara,
Sennar, the Nile, and the Korosko desert.

(15) In order to attain a clear view of native Ethiopian
history, as distinct from the visits and influence of
Europeans, it must be borne in mind that during the last
three hundred years, and indeed for a longer period,
the country has been merely
a conglomeration of provinces and districts, ill defined,
loosely connected and generally at war with each other.

Of these the chief provinces have been Tigre (northern), Amhara
(central) and Shoa (southern). The seat of government, or
rather of overlordship, has usually been in Amhara, the ruler
of which, calling himself negus negusti (king of kings, or
emperor), has exacted tribute, when he could, from the other
provinces. The title of negus negusti has been to a
considerable extent based on the blood in the veins of the
claimant. All the emperors have based their claims on their
direct descent from Solomon and the queen of Sheba; but it
is needless to say that in many, if not in most, cases their
success has been due more to the force of their arms than
to the purity of their lineage.

Some of the rulers of the
larger provinces have at times been given, or have given
themselves, the title of negus or king, so that on occasion
as many as three, or even more, neguses have been reigning
at the same time; and this must be borne in mind by the
student of Ethiopian history in order to avoid confusion of
rulers.

During
the 18th century the most prominent and beneficent rulers were
the emperor Yesu of Gondar, who died about 1720, Sebastie,
negus of Shoa (1703-1718), Amada Yesus of Shoa, who extended
his kingdom and founded Ankober (1743-1774), Tekla Giorgis
of Amhara (1770-1798?) and Asfa Nassen of Shoa (1774-1807),
the latter being especially renowned as a wise and benevolent
monarch. The first years of the 19th century were disturbed
by fierce campaigns between Guxa, ras of Gondar, and Wolda
Selassie, ras of Tigre, who were both striving for the
crown of Guxa's master, the emperor Eguala Izeion. Wolda
Selassie was eventually the victor, and practically ruled
the whole country till his death in 1816 at the age of eighty.

British mission and missionary enterprise.

(16) Mention must here be made of the first British mission,
under Lord Valentia and Mr Henry Salt, which was sent in 1805
to conclude an alliance with Ethiopia, and obtain a port on
the Red Sea in case France secured Egypt by dividing up the
Turkish empire with Russia. This mission was succeeded by many
travellers, missionaries and merchants of all countries, and
the stream of Europeans continued until well into Theodore's
reign.

(17) Wolda Selassie of Tigre was succeeded in 1817, through
force of arms, by Sabagadis of Agame, and the latter, as
ras of Tigre, introduced various Englishmen, whom he much
admired, into the country.

Rise of the emperor Theodore.

(18) Lij (= Mr) Kassa was born in Kwara, a small district
of Western Amhara, in 1818. His father was a small local
chief, and his uncle was governor of the districts of Dembea,
Kwara and Chelga between Lake Tsana and the undefined N.W.
frontier.

On the death of his uncle he was made chief of
Kwara.

He turned his attention to
conquering the remaining chief divisions of the country,
Gojam, Tigre and Shoa, which still remained unsubdued.

(February 1855)
proclaimed himself negus negusti of Ethiopia under the
name of Theodore III.
In 1855 Kassa, under the name of the emperor
Theodore, advanced against Shoa with a large army. Dissensions
broke out among the Shoans, and after a desperate and futile
attack on Theodore at Debra-Berhan, Haeli Melicoth died of
exhaustion and fever, nominating with his last breath his
eleven-year-old son Menelek2 as successor (November 1855).
Darge, Haeli's brother, took charge of the young prince, but
after a hard fight with Angeda, one of Theodore's rases, was
obliged to capitulate. Menelek was handed over to the negus,
taken to Gondar, and there trained in Theodore's service.

Theodore died after a battle with the British in 1868

Menelek II., king of Shoa (22) It is now time to return
to the story of the young prince Menelek, who, as we have
seen, had been nominated by his late father as ruler of Shoa,
but was in Theodore's power in Tigre. The following table
shows his descent since the beginning of the 19th century:--

In 1865, Menelek, now a desjazmach 4 of Tigre,
arrived in Shoa, and
was there acclaimed as negus.

On the death of Theodore (13th April 1868) many Shoans,
including Ras Darge, were released, and Menelek began to
feel himself strong enough, after a few preliminary minor
campaigns, to undertake offensive operations against the
northern princes. But these projects were of little avail,
for Kassai of Tigre, as above mentioned, had by this time
(1872) risen to supreme power in the north. Proclaiming
himself negus negusti under the name of Johannes or John,
he conquered Menelek and Shoa.

The Italians now come on the scene. Assab, a port near the
southern entrance of the Red Sea, had been bought from the
focal sultan in March 1870 by an Italian company, which,
after acquiring more land in 1879 and 1880, was bought
out by the Italian government in 1882. In this year Count
Pietro Antonelli was despatched to Shoa in order to improve
the prospects of the colony by treaties with Menelek and
the sultan of Aussa.

In April 1888 the Italian forces, numbering over 20,000
men, came into touch with the Ethiopian army; but negotiations
took the place of fighting, with the result that both forces
retired, the Italians only leaving some 5000 troops in
Eritrea, as their colony was now called.

Meanwhile John had
not been idle with regard to the dervishes, who had in the
meantime become masters of the Egyptian Sudan.
continued, and in 1887 a great battle ensued at
Gallabat, in which the dervishes, under Zeki Tumal, were
beaten. But a stray bullet struck the king, and the Ethiopians
decided to retire. The king died during the night, and his
body fell into the hands of the enemy (9th March 1889).

Immediately the news of John's death reached Menelek,
he proclaimed himself emperor, and received the submission
of Gondar, Gojam and several other provinces.

Battle of Adowa against Italy. On the 26th of October 1896
a provisional treaty of peace was concluded at
Adis Ababa, recognizing
the absolute independence of Ethiopia.

Regarding the question of
railways, the first concession for a railway from the coast
at Jibuti (French Somaliland) to the interior was granted
by Menelek to a French company in 1894.
The railway was completed to
Dire Dawa, 28 miles from Harrar, by the last day of 1902.